The Neverending Story - Coloured Text, Images Page 7

  Out of the whirling swarm that made up the face came a sound suggesting the giggling of many voices.

  “You’re all wrong, Atreyu Twolegs. We know nothing of the Southern Oracle and nothing of Uyulala, but we do know that this dragon cannot carry you. And even if he were in the best of health, the trip would take so long that the Childlike Empress would die of her illness in the meantime. You must measure your Quest, Atreyu, in terms not of your own life but of hers.”

  The gaze of the eye with the vertical pupil was almost unbearable.

  “That’s true,” he said in a small voice.

  “Besides,” the motionless face went on, “the luckdragon has Ygramul’s poison in his body. He has less than an hour to live.”

  “Then there’s no hope,” Atreyu murmured. “Not for him, not for me, and not for you either, Ygramul.”

  “Oh well,” the voice buzzed. “Ygramul would at least have had one good meal. But who says it’s Ygramul’s last meal? She knows a way of getting you to the Southern Oracle in a twinkling. But the question is: Will you like it?”

  “What is that way?”

  “That is Ygramul’s secret. The creatures of darkness have their secrets too, Atreyu Twolegs. Ygramul has never revealed hers. And you too must swear you’ll never tell a soul. For it would be greatly to Ygramul’s disadvantage if it were known, yes, greatly to her disadvantage.”

  “I swear! Speak!”

  The great steel-blue face leaned forward just a little and buzzed almost inaudibly.

  “You must let Ygramul bite you.”

  Atreyu shrank back in horror.

  “Ygramul’s poison,” the voice went on, “kills within an hour. But to one who has it inside him it gives the power to wish himself in any part of Fantastica he chooses.

  Imagine if that were known! All Ygramul’s victims would escape her.”

  “An hour?” cried Atreyu. “What can I do in an hour?”

  “Well,” buzzed the swarm, “at least it’s more than all the hours remaining to you here.”

  Atreyu struggled with himself.

  “Will you set the luckdragon free if I ask it in the name of the Childlike Empress?” he finally asked.

  “No!” said the face. “You have no right to ask that of Ygramul even if you are wearing AURYN, the Gem. The Childlike Empress takes us all as we are. That’s why Ygramul respects her emblem.”

  Atreyu was still standing with bowed head. Ygramul had spoken the truth. He couldn’t save the white luckdragon. His own wishes didn’t count.

  He looked up and said: “Do what you suggested.”

  Instantly the steel-blue cloud descended on him and enveloped him on all sides.

  He felt a numbing pain in the left shoulder. His last thought was: “To the Southern Oracle!”

  Then the world went black before his eyes.

  When the wolf reached the spot a short time later, he saw the giant spider web—but there was no one in sight. There the trail he had been following broke off, and try as he might, he could not find it again.

  Bastian stopped reading. He felt miserable, as though he himself had Ygramul’s poison inside him.

  “Thank God I’m not in Fantastica,” he muttered. “Luckily, such monsters don’t exist in reality. Anyway, it’s only a story.”

  But was it only a story? How did it happen that Ygramul, and probably Atreyu as well, had heard Bastian’s cry of terror?

  Little by little, this book was beginning to give him a spooky feeling.

  ver so slowly Atreyu awoke to the world. He saw that he was still in the mountains, and for a terrible moment he suspected that Ygramul had deceived him.

  But these, he soon realized, were entirely different mountains. They seemed to consist of great rust-red blocks of stone, piled in such a way as to form strange towers and pyramids. In between these structures the ground was covered with bushes and shrubbery. The air was blazing hot. The country was bathed in glaring sunlight.

  Shading his eyes with his hand, Atreyu looked around him and discovered, about a mile away, an irregularly shaped arch, perhaps a hundred feet high. It too appeared to consist of piled stone blocks.

  Could that be the entrance to the Southern Oracle? As far as he could see, there was nothing behind the arch, only an endless empty plain, no building, no temple, no grove, nothing suggesting an oracle.

  Suddenly, while he was wondering what to do, he heard a deep, bronzelike voice:

  “Atreyu!” And then again: “Atreyu!”

  Turning around, he saw the white luckdragon emerging from one of the rust-red towers. Blood was pouring from his wounds, and he was so weak he could barely drag himself along.

  “Here I am, Atreyu,” he said, merrily winking one of his ruby-red eyes. “And you needn’t be so surprised. I was pretty well paralyzed when I was caught in that spider web, but I heard everything Ygramul said to you. So I thought to myself: She has bitten me too, after all, so why shouldn’t I take advantage of the secret as well? That’s how I got away from her.”

  Atreyu was overjoyed.

  “I hated leaving you to Ygramul,” said. “But what could I do?”

  “Nothing,” said the luckdragon. “You’ve saved my life all the same—even if I had something to do with it.”

  And again he winked, this time with the other eye.

  “Saved your life,” Atreyu repeated, “for an hour. That’s all we have left. I can feel Ygramul’s poison burning my heart away.”

  “Every poison has its antidote,” said the white dragon. “Everything will turn out all right. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t imagine how,” said Atreyu.

  “Neither can I,” said the luckdragon. “But that’s the wonderful part of it. From now on you’ll succeed in everything you attempt. Because I’m a luckdragon. Even when I was caught in the web, I didn’t give up hope. And as you see, I was right.”

  Atreyu smiled.

  “Tell me, why did you wish yourself here and not in some other place where you might have been cured?”

  “My life belongs to you,” said the dragon, “if you’ll accept it. I thought you’d need a mount for this Great Quest of yours. And you’ll soon see that crawling around the country on two legs, or even galloping on a good horse, can’t hold a candle to whizzing through the air on the back of a luckdragon. Are we partners?”

  “We’re partners,” said Atreyu.

  “By the way,” said the dragon. “My name is Falkor.”

  “Glad to meet you,” said Atreyu, “but while we’re talking, what little time we have left is seeping away. I’ve got to do something. But what?”

  “Have luck,” said Falkor. “What else?”

  But Atreyu heard no more. He had fallen down and lay motionless in the soft folds of the dragon’s body.

  Ygramul’s poison was taking effect.

  When Atreyu—no one knows how much later—opened his eyes again, he saw nothing but a very strange face bent over him. It was the wrinkliest, shriveledest face he had ever seen, and only about the size of a fist. It was as brown as a baked apple, and the eyes in it glittered like stars. The head was covered with a bonnet made of withered leaves.

  Atreyu felt a little drinking cup held to his lips.

  “Nice medicine! Good medicine!” mumbled the wrinkled little lips in the shriveled face. “Just drink, child. Do you good.”

  Atreyu sipped. It tasted strange. Kind of sweet and sour.

  Atreyu found it painful to speak. “What about the white dragon?” he asked.

  “Doing fine!” the voice whispered. “Don’t worry, my boy. You’ll get well. You’ll both get well. The worst is over. Just drink. Drink.”

  Atreyu took another swallow and again sleep overcame him, but this time it was the deep, refreshing sleep of recovery.

  The clock in the belfry struck two.

  Bastian couldn’t hold it in any longer. He simply had to go. He had felt the need for quite some time, but he hadn’t been able to stop reading. Besides, he
had been afraid to go downstairs. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, that the building was deserted, that no one would see him. But still he was afraid, as if the school were a person watching him.

  But in the end there was no help for it; he just had to go!

  He set the open book down on the mat, went to the door and listened with pounding heart. Nothing. He slid the bolt and slowly turned the big key in the lock. When he pressed the handle, the door opened, creaking loudly.

  He padded out in his stocking feet, leaving the door behind him open to avoid unnecessary noise. He crept down the stairs to the second floor. The students’ toilet was at the other end of the long corridor with the spinach-green classroom doors. Racing against time, Bastian ran as fast as he could—and just made it.

  As he sat there, he wondered why heroes in stories like the one he was reading never had to worry about such problems. Once—when he was much younger—he had asked his religion teacher if Jesus Christ had had to go like an ordinary person. After all, he had taken food and drink like everyone else. The class had howled with laughter, and the teacher, instead of an answer, had given him several demerits for “insolence”. He hadn’t meant to be insolent.

  “Probably,” Bastian now said to himself, “these things are just too unimportant to be mentioned in stories.”

  Yet for him they could be of the most pressing and embarrassing importance.

  He was finished. He pulled the chain and was about to leave when he heard steps in the corridor outside. One classroom door after another was opened and closed, and the steps came closer and closer.

  Bastian’s heart pounded in his throat. Where could he hide? He stood glued to the spot as though paralyzed.

  The washroom door opened, luckily in such a way as to shield Bastian. The janitor came in. One by one, he looked into the stalls. When he came to the one where the water was still running and the chain swaying a little, he hesitated for a moment and mumbled something to himself. But when the water stopped running he shrugged his shoulders and went out. His steps died away on the stairs.

  Bastian hadn’t dared breathe the whole time, and now he gasped for air. He noticed that his knees were trembling.

  As fast as possible he padded down the corridor with the spinach-green doors, up the stairs, and back into the attic. Only when the door was locked and bolted behind him did he relax.

  With a deep sigh he settled back on his pile of mats, wrapped himself in his army blankets, and reached for the book.

  When Atreyu awoke for the second time, he felt perfectly rested and well. He sat up.

  It was night. The moon was shining bright, and Atreyu saw he was in the same place where he and the white dragon had collapsed. Falkor was still lying there. His breathing came deep and easy and he seemed to be fast asleep. His wounds had been dressed.

  Atreyu noticed that his own shoulder had been dressed in the same way, not with cloth but with herbs and plant fibers.

  Only a few steps away there was a small cave, from which issued a faint beam of light.

  Taking care not to move his left arm, Atreyu stood up cautiously and approached the cave. Bending down—for the entrance was very low—he saw a room that looked like an alchemist’s workshop in miniature. At the back an open fire was crackling merrily. Crucibles, retorts, and strangely shaped flasks were scattered all about. Bundles of dried plants were piled on shelves. The little table in the middle of the room and the other furniture seemed to be made of root wood, crudely nailed together.

  Atreyu heard a cough, and then he saw a little man sitting in an armchair by the fire. The little man’s hat had been carved from a root and looked like an inverted pipe bowl. The face was as brown and shriveled as the face Atreyu had seen leaning over him when he first woke up. But this one was wearing big eyeglasses, and the features seemed sharper and more anxious. The little man was reading a big book that was lying in his lap.

  Then a second little figure, which Atreyu recognized as the one that had bent over him, came waddling out of another room. Now Atreyu saw that this little person was a woman. Apart from her bonnet of leaves, she—like the man in the armchair—was wearing a kind of monk’s robe, which also seemed to be made of withered leaves.

  Humming merrily, she rubbed her hands and busied herself with a kettle that was hanging over the fire. Neither of the little people would have reached up to Atreyu’s knee.

  Obviously they belonged to the widely ramified family of the gnomes, though to a rather obscure branch.

  “Woman!” said the little man testily. “Get out of my light. You are interfering with my research!”

  “You and your research!” said the woman. “Who cares about that? The important thing is my health elixir. Those two outside are in urgent need of it.”

  “Those two,” said the man irritably, “will be far more in need of my help and advice.”

  “Maybe so,” said the little woman. “But not until they are well. Move over, old man!”

  Grumbling, the little man moved his chair a short distance from the fire.

  Atreyu cleared his throat to call attention to his presence. The two gnomes looked around.

  “He’s already well,” said the little man. “Now it’s my turn.”

  “Certainly not!” the little woman hissed. “He’ll be well when I say so. It’ll be your turn when I say it’s your turn.”

  She turned to Atreyu.

  “We would invite you in, but it’s not quite big enough, is it? Just a moment. We shall come out to you.”

  Taking a small mortar, she ground something or other into a powder, which she tossed in the kettle. Then she washed her hands, dried them on her robe, and said to the little man: “Stay here until I call you, Engywook. Understand?”

  “Yes, Urgl, I understand,” the little man grumbled. “I understand only too well.”

  The female gnome came out of the cave and looked up at Atreyu from under knitted brows.

  “Well, well. We seem to be getting better, don’t we?”

  Atreyu nodded.

  The gnome climbed up on a rocky ledge, level with Atreyu’s face, and sat down.

  “No pain?” she asked.

  “None worth mentioning,” Atreyu answered.

  “Nonsense!” the old woman snapped. “Does it hurt or doesn’t it?”

  “It still hurts,” said Atreyu, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Not to you, perhaps, but it does to me! Since when does the patient tell the doctor what matters? What do you know about it? If it’s to get well, it has to hurt. If it stopped hurting, your arm would be dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Atreyu, who felt like a scolded child. “I only wanted to say . . . that is, I wanted to thank you.”

  “What for?” said Urgl impatiently. “I’m a healer, after all. I’ve only done my professional duty. Besides, Engywook, that’s my old man, saw the Glory hanging on your neck. So what would you expect?”

  “What about Falkor?” Atreyu asked. “How’s he getting along?”

  “Falkor? Who’s that?”

  “The white luckdragon.”

  “Oh. I don’t know yet. Took a little more punishment than you. But then he’s bigger and stronger, so he ought to make it. Why not? Needs a little more rest. Where did you ever pick up that poison? And where have you come from all of a sudden? And where are you going? And who are you in the first place?”

  Engywook was standing in the mouth of the cave. He listened as Atreyu answered Urgl’s questions. When Urgl opened her mouth to speak again, he shouted: “Hold your tongue, woman! Now it’s my turn.”

  Removing his pipe-bowl hat, he scratched his bald head, and said: “Don’t let her tone bother you, Atreyu. Old Urgl is a little crude, but she means no harm. My name is Engywook. We are the well-known Gnomics. Ever hear of us?”

  “No,” Atreyu confessed. Engywook seemed rather offended.

  “Oh well,” he said. “Apparently you don’t move in scientific circles, or someone wo
uld undoubtedly have told you that you couldn’t find a better adviser than yours truly if you’re looking for Uyulala in the Southern Oracle. You’ve come to the right address, my boy.”

  “Don’t give yourself airs,” Urgl broke in. Then she climbed down from her ledge and, grumbling to herself, vanished into the cave.

  Engywook ignored her comment.

  “I can explain everything,” he went on. “I’ve studied the question all my life. Inside and out. I set up my observatory just for that. I’m in the last stage of a great scientific work on the Oracle. “The Riddle of Uyulala, solved by Professor Engywook.”

  That’s the title. Sounds all right, doesn’t it? To be published in the very near future.

  Unfortunately a few details are still lacking. You can help me, my boy.”

  “An observatory?” asked Atreyu, who had never heard the word.

  Engywook nodded and, beaming with pride, motioned Atreyu to follow him.

  A narrow path twined its way upward between great stone blocks. In some places where the grade was especially steep, tiny steps had been cut out of the stone. Of course, they were much too small for Atreyu’s feet and he simply stepped over them. Even so, he had a hard time keeping up with the gnome.

  “Bright moonlight tonight,” said Engywook. “You’ll see them all right.”

  “See who?” Atreyu asked. “Uyulala?”

  Engywook only frowned and shook his head.

  At last they came to the top of the hill. The ground was flat, but on one side there was a natural stone parapet. In the middle of this wall there was a hole, obviously the work of gnomian hands. And behind the hole, on a stand made of root wood, stood a small telescope.

  Engywook looked through the telescope and made a slight adjustment by turning some screws. Then he nodded with satisfaction and invited Atreyu to look. To put himself on a level with it, Atreyu had to lie down on the ground and prop himself on his elbows.

  The telescope was aimed at the great stone arch, or more specifically at the lower part of the left pillar. And beside this pillar, as Atreyu now saw, an enormous sphinx was sitting motionless in the moonlight. The forepaws, on which she was propped, were those of a lion, the hindquarters were those of a bull; on her back she bore the wings of an eagle, and her face was that of a human woman—in form at any rate, for the expression was far from human. I was hard to tell whether this face was smiling or whether it expressed deep grief or utter indifference. After looking at it for some time, Atreyu seemed to see abysmal wickedness and cruelty, but a moment later he had to correct his impression, for he found only unruffled calm.